Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have determined that toothed whales lack functional Mx genes—a surprising discovery, since all 56 other sequenced mammals in the study possess these genes to fight ...

A team of researchers looking for oil and gas deposits beneath the seafloor off the western coast of southern Africa has found four large "fish-falls" on the seabed: the carcasses of one whale shark and three mobulid rays. ...

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers working in Australia has found via DNA analysis, that the lack of genetic diversity in pygmy blue whales is due to natural causes, not because of whaling. In their paper published in the ...

For millions of years, blue whales have cruised the world's oceans with hardly a care, their sheer size making them largely free from predator attacks. The downside to being the largest animals in history, however, is that ...

Almost since the time of Melville's epic hunt, scientists have been fascinated by the remarkable attributes of the sperm whale and its kin, the smaller pigmy and dwarf whales. Capable of diving to great depths and gifted ...

New University of Otago research is providing the most comprehensive picture of the evolutionary history of baleen whales, which are not only the largest animals ever to live on earth, but also among the most unusual.

Whale

Whales are marine mammals of order Cetacea which are neither dolphins—members, in other words, of the families Delphinidae or Platanistoidae—nor porpoises. They include the blue whale, the largest living animal. Orcas, colloquially referred to as "killer whales", and pilot whales have whale in their name but for the purpose of biological classification they are actually dolphins. For centuries whales have been hunted for meat and as a source of valuable raw materials. By the middle of the 20th century, large-scale industrial whaling had left many species seriously endangered.